Only one in four Californians think President Donald Trump is doing a good job in the Oval Office, a poll released Wednesday found — the lowest approval rate in the state so far in Trump’s six-month presidency.
Previous polls conducted by the same organization, the Public Policy Institute of California, found Trump at 30 percent approval among adult residents in January, 31 percent in March, and 27 percent in May.
Nationally, 37 percent of respondents to the latest national Gallup tracking poll approve of Trump’s job performance.
Survey respondents said in follow-up interviews with the Bay Area News Group that they weren’t surprised Trump was so disliked in the Golden State.
“I can’t disapprove enough,” said Jennifer Loring, 50, an application designer in Alameda, citing Trump’s work towards ending the Affordable Care Act and his decision to yank the U.S. out of the CO2 emission-limiting Paris agreement. “I’m surprised there’s even one in four, I don’t know how anybody could approve of what’s happening right now.”
Virginia Purcell, 22, an intern in Oakland, said she’d been watching the deepening investigations into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign, and thought Trump was “deteriorating our country.”
“Trump can’t say this is just fake news anymore,” Purcell, a Democrat, said.
Among likely voters, however, Trump did considerably better, with 34 percent saying this month they approve of his job performance.
Part of the reason why is the stark partisan divide in opinions on Trump: Just 9 percent of California Democrats approve of him, while 68 percent of Republicans approve. Republicans are more likely to be registered voters, older and have higher incomes, which means they’re more likely to be counted as likely voters, said Mark Baldassare, the president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute.
Baldassare said he couldn’t remember any previous president who racked up such poor approval ratings so early in his first term, although George W. Bush had a 19 percent approval rating in California at the height of the 2008 economic crisis.
Trump scored just a single percentage point better than the U.S. Congress, which had a 24 percent approval rating in California.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown saw strong approval ratings, with 53 percent of Californians saying they support the job he’s doing. 50 percent of state residents, and 45 percent of likely voters, approve of the California legislature.
The poll, which was conducted between July 9 and 18, surveyed 1,708 California adult residents in English and Spanish. The margin of error was 3.4 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
